Combo Action Button

[Shurrikhan]

Except it isn't inherently bad design to have multiple buttons for combos. Some people may dislike it, however that isn't the same as it being flawed. You'll fine numerous controller and Keyboard player who have no issues whatsoever nor do they want anything changed. So, at best, it's a subjective argument.

You just reduced a complaint from someone clearly not among the "numerous controller and Keyboard player who have no issues whatsoever nor do they want anything changed" to a matter of "get better hardware, pleb". So let's not pretend there aren't people who are having issues with it. The sheer number of threads over the years from those with physical handicaps asking for advice on how comfortably bind all they need to play well onto their keyboard, the button-bloat complaint threads, and the four Combo Consolidation threads still in the New Posts pages beg to differ.

In addition, I would also like to point out the whole concept of a combo: The idea of a combo is to input a sequential set of commands where the proceeding command benefits from the previous. In early fighting game days, this resulted in the next attack being unblockable. So combined with a very strong secondary attack you create an optimal rotation. The same applies here, with potency increases being the reward.

In short, players need to be given the chance to screw up as much as the chance to be rewarded. Our combo system is probably of the last things that need adjusting in this game.

Except, the only failure our combos allow is finger slippage, which is irrelevant except to the newest players, those most easily panicked, or the physically handicapped. It is not a difficulty that the vast majority of us face except mid-hectic-mechanic when progging when over-stressed in Savage content. At most, it adds exclusion. Generally, it's a non-factor.

By your own definition, our "combos" are not combos. For a command to benefit from the previous, that following command must first actually exist outside of the given sequence. Otherwise you cannot have improvement. You can add something on to or in place of nothing, but you cannot improve on something that does not yet exist. And unless you're calling all combos skills in ubiquitous 100 potency and zero additional effects each as the actual skill, there's no improvement happening. Our "combos" are like a series of switches with electromagnetically sealed caps, each of which simply opens the next until you reach the final (read: actual) switch. You cannot viably hit C before B or B before A.

Compare that to a good fighting game. There, failure is not limited to manual mishaps; it includes more significant memory, it includes prediction, and it includes strategy. Each of in-range skills can see use in its own right and each do actually benefit others through the effects of the skill itself, rather than their merely unlocking each other in a decision-less sequence. In some, specific skills could only be accessed through specific sequences, but in every case every initially available action had course-viability and at every stage in every course you still had at least situationally viable choices. Those, therefore, are combos. XIV's are not. XIV's is a cycling system that reduces the amount of decisions one can make to every x GCDs. They are, for all intents and purposes, a way to dumb down gameplay.

Again, I'm not asking for my work to be done for me. I like having as many buttons as we do now, and merely want to see some QoL improvements (as per the ability to snapshot mod key states so that I can use my Shift/Alt/Ctrl-QWEASD without pausing movement I mentioned to Bourne earlier), but XIV's combo system as it stands now has virtually no merit to be lost regardless of whether it would come in conflict (as it inevitably will) with future additions to the game due to the bloat it causes, and makes even less sense than it has (non)merit. On principle, I'd much rather have as many buttons as there are decisions available. And in practice, I'd much rather see the availability of decision making increased rather than button count reduced.